Old Master Paintings Gemäldegalerie Berlin Germany

Since 2000, Old Master Paintings have been on display at Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie. It’s the most beautiful collection I’ve seen!

Berlin Gemäldegalerie

The Gemäldegalerie is part of the Kulturforum (Culture Forum), a modern center for art and culture in Berlin Potsdamer Straße. It includes museums, concert halls, and libraries, where I’ve spent time and learned so much!

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The Kulturforum is West Berlin’s “most important building ensemble of the post-war period “.

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“Masterpieces from all periods of art history, including paintings by van Eyck, Bruegel, Dürer, Raphael, Titian, Caravaggio, Rubens, Rembrandt, and Vermeer, are on display at the Gemäldegalerie.”

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Kulturforum offers over a mile of breathtaking art displays in an exhibition area of over 75,00 sq. ft. There are seventy-two halls leading through “individual art landscapes and epochs”.

The Gemäldegalerie collection focuses on German and Italian painting from the 13th to the 16th century and Dutch painting from the 15th to the 16th century. This blog post includes some photos taken – captions are the best I could manage, as they were in German. Before touring this exhibition, I didn’t know the works of many of these incredible masters.

German, Dutch, French, Flemish Masterpieces

The collection includes German paintings of the late Gothic and Renaissance periods. Flemish and Dutch paintings from the 17th century include “portraits, landscapes, genre paintings, still lifes, and interiors” – all magnificent to see!

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A collection of sixteen Rembrandt paintings in the center of the Gemäldegalerie is “one of the world’s largest and highest quality”.

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There are six rooms of Italian, French, German, Spanish, and English 18^th century paintings. Over 1000 masterpieces are on display in the main gallery. Visitors can view a catalog of the collection, and a digital gallery is accessible via computer workstations on the main floor. Audio guides were available in German, English, and French, but viewing so many paintings is overwhelming. I need to take another tour!

Heinz Kuckei Collections

The Gemäldegalerie presents ten loans from the Heinz Kuckei Collections. The ensemble includes 17th century Dutch paintings by Jan Steen, Jan Davisz de Heem, and from the celebrated Rembrandt Workshop.

Jacopo and Giovanni Bellini Paintings

The Gemäldegalerie is focusing on a group of paintings by Italian Father and Son Jacopo and Giovanni Bellini. “In Renaissance Italy, art was often a lucrative family business, and no family of painters was more successful than the Bellinis.”

Restorations

Some of the Bellini paintings on display are restorations of pieces stored since World War II. During restoration, several of the works have “undergone various changes”. In some cases, they’re “fragments of a larger altarpiece or interior decoration, partially damaged and reduced on the surface“.

Restoration addressed light, climate, and influences that change the appearance of paintings over time. None of the paintings were able to “maintain a state as they were when leaving the artist’s workshop hundreds of years ago”.